LONDON – European club soccer becomes a little less confusing but a lot more watered-down from next season, when the ridiculously-named European Cup-Winners’ Cup is scrapped and merged with the increasingly bloated European Champions’ Cup.
It used to be a quite straightforward competition – exclusively for the champions of European nations who then played off against each other. But then it expanded to take in second-place teams, and from next year third place might even be enough.
Then there are the Cup winners – those that have won the knockout tournaments that run alongside league competitions. That one always did seem a bit ridiculous, and unless your favorite team is actually involved, pretty advisable to avoid experiencing altogether. Because unless you draw the line somewhere, you’ll start circling the Norwegian Intertoto Cup semifinal highlights from 1995 being squeezed in on the ESPN5 listings at 3 a.m. And then you’d stay up to watch the whole thing.
Honestly, you can go too far with these things, because on BBC Radio I have just heard excited announcements of developments in the second of the two-game series of the Auto Windscreens Shield Northern Area final. Well somebody cares.
The honor, such as it is, of winning the last Cup-Winners’ Cup contest ever on planet Earth will likely to go the current titleholder Chelsea, or red-hot Lazio, currently blazing a trail atop the standings in Italy. Lokomotiv Moscow, Lazio’s next opponent, is for obvious reasons of sheer obscurity a rank outsider.
Chelsea, no kidding here, disposed of a Norwegian team of part-timers already out-of-season in their own domestic competition to reach the semifinals. That’s how credible it’s all become; sure, the final four are all tough nuts, but let’s just say there were no surprises as they went through the motions to get this far.
In common with many an English team installed with a false superiority complex by the gung-ho London tabloids, Chelsea has already carved itself out as the clear favorite, but besides the dangerous threat of Lazio, it still has to beat Real Mallorca to even reach the final.
This is because British TV channels are so crammed with low-grade domestic product that the overseas version seldom gets a mention. So while a handful of Chelsea fans might be aware that Mallorca led the Spanish league for much of this season and still has a good shot and finishing among the top three. It also has a miserly defense, still among the top half-dozen among hundreds of European clubs.
Guided by the shrewd Argentinian coach Hector Cuper, Mallorca has surprised all the big guns of Spanish soccer this season. Disappointed at the way the team he built has been broken up as cash-strapped Mallorca has gradually sold its best players to richer clubs, Cuper has already lined himself up to take over at Valencia next season. But maybe not without a memorable parting shot.
Chelsea must have noticed the achievements of Lazio, which has burst through the pack of pretenders and washed-up big spenders to manufacture a five-point lead at the top of the standings.
By Italian standards, that’s a formidable mountain any would-be challenger has to climb, and 13 wins from 16 games tells its own story. Already the club has been building on its solid continuity by giving Swedish coach Sven-Goran Eriksson a new contract that runs through 2002 at double his present salary.
The only grey cloud on Lazio’s bright horizon is the fractured toe suffered by ace striker Christian Vieri during last weekend’s 2-0 victory over Venezia in Serie A. Vieri has been a powerful weapon for Lazio with seven goals since his return from injury a couple of months back, and for the fifth time in a row he has been forced to withdraw from the Italian national squad due to injury. Italy faces Denmark in a European Nations 2000 qualifying match over the weekend.
France also will have to do without one of its big guns as it takes on the Ukraine in a must-win qualifying match for the reigning world champs. ZZ Top himself, Zinedine Zidane, has a knee injury, which means that Nicolas Anelka, tearing it up for Arsenal lately, should get the start.
Anelka, about to turn 20 and displaying the kind of deadly striking instinct that could yet enable Arsenal to retain the championship in England, has pounced for 14 goals this season. This has not gone unnoticed at Zidane’s club Juventus, which has put $20 million on the table in a bid to lure the young French star to Italy.
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BECAUSE of the European Nations qualifiers there will be little major league action involving clubs this weekend, and that amounts to a major loss in revenue for privately owned clubs obliged to loan out their players to various national teams competing in a poor man’s World Cup.
Club owners are not keen on the competition and who can blame them. Well, come on, which team won the last European Nations Championship? And who cares anyway?
OK, you may remember Germany defeating the Czech Republic in the final of ’96 with a Golden Goal. But compared with the big show, it’s barely even fifth among the support acts is it? Yes, let’s face it, the Euro Nations Cup is the national equivalent of our old pal the Cup-winners, a dinosaur on its last legs.
Contests staged for their own sake don’t mean much any more. If it doesn’t make much money, why waste your time? So expect world soccer in the 21st century to be a less friendly, but far slicker product than that which went before. Which won’t be a bad thing at all.
